The Phantom World Part 56

CHAPTER LX.

THE MORAL IMPOSSIBILITY OF THE REVENANS COMING OUT OF THEIR GRAVES.

I have already proposed the objection formed upon the impossibility of these vampires coming out of their graves, and returning to them again, without its appearing that they have disturbed the earth, either in coming out or going in again. No one has ever replied to this difficulty, and never will. To say that the demon subtilizes and spiritualizes the bodies of vampires, is a thing a.s.serted without proof or likelihood.

The fluidity of the blood, the ruddiness, the suppleness of these vampires, ought not to surprise any one, any more than the growth of the nails and hair, and their bodies remaining undecayed. We see every day, bodies which remain uncorrupted, and retain a ruddy color after death. This ought not to appear strange in those who die without malady and a sudden death; or of certain maladies, known to our physicians, which do not deprive the blood of its fluidity, or the limbs of their suppleness.

With regard to the growth of the hair and nails in bodies which are not yet decayed, the thing is quite natural. There remains in those bodies a certain slow and imperceptible circulation of the humors, which causes this growth of the nails and hair, in the same way that we every day see common bulbs grow and shoot, although without any nourishment derived from the earth.

The same may be said of flowers, and in general of all that depends on vegetation in animals and plants.

The belief of the common people of Greece in the return to earth of the vroucolacas, is not much better founded than that of vampires and ghosts. It is only the ignorance, the prejudice, the terror of the Greeks, which have given rise to this vain and ridiculous belief, and which they keep up even to this very day. The narrative which we have reported after M. Tournefort, an ocular witness and a good philosopher, may suffice to undeceive those who would maintain the contrary.

The incorruption of the bodies of those who died in a state of excommunication, has still less foundation than the return of the vampires, and the vexations of the living caused by the vroucolacas; antiquity has had no similar belief. The schismatic Greeks, and the heretics separated from the Church of Rome, who certainly died excommunicated, ought, upon this principle, to remain uncorrupted; which is contrary to experience, and repugnant to good sense. And if the Greeks pretend to be the true Church, all the Roman Catholics, who have a separate communion from them, ought then also to remain undecayed. The instances cited by the Greeks either prove nothing, or prove too much. Those bodies which have not decayed, were really excommunicated, or not. If they were canonically and really excommunicated, then the question falls to the ground. If they were not really and canonically excommunicated, then it must be proved that there was no other cause of incorruption--which can never be proved.

Moreover, anything so equivocal as incorruption, cannot be adduced as a proof in so serious a matter as this. It is owned, that often the bodies of saints are preserved from decay; that is looked upon as certain, among the Greeks as among the Latins--therefore, we cannot thence conclude that this same incorruption is a proof that a person is excommunicated.

In short, this proof is universal and general, or only particular. I mean to say, either all excommunicated persons remain undecayed, or only a few of them. We cannot maintain that all those who die in a state of excommunication, are incorruptible. For then all the Greeks towards the Latins, and the Latins towards the Greeks, would be undecayed, which is not the case. That proof then is very frivolous, and nothing can be concluded from it. I mistrust, a great deal, all those stories which are related to prove this pretended incorruptibility of excommunicated persons. If well examined, many of them would doubtless be found to be false.

CHAPTER LXI.

WHAT IS RELATED CONCERNING THE BODIES OF THE EXCOMMUNICATED LEAVING THE CHURCH, IS SUBJECT TO VERY GREAT DIFFICULTIES.

Whatever respect I may feel for St. Gregory the Great, who relates some instances of deceased persons who died in a state of excommunication going out of the church before the eyes of every one present; and whatever consideration may be due to other authors whom I have cited, and who relate other circ.u.mstances of a similar nature, and even still more incredible, I cannot believe that we have these legends with all the circ.u.mstances belonging to them; and after the reasons for doubt which I have recorded at the end of these stories, I believe I may again say, that G.o.d, to inspire the people with still greater fear of excommunication, and a greater regard for the sentences and censures of the church, has willed on these occasions, for reasons unknown to us, to show forth his power, and work a miracle in the sight of the faithful; for how can we explain all these things without having recourse to the miraculous? All that is said of persons who being dead chew under ground in their graves, is so pitiful, so puerile, that it is not worthy of being seriously refuted. Everybody owns that too often people are buried who are not quite dead. There are but too many instances of this in ancient and modern histories.

The thesis of M. Vinslow, and the notes added thereto by M. Bruhier, serve to prove that there are few certain signs of real death except the putridity of a body being at least begun. We have an infinite number of instances of persons supposed to be dead, who have come to life again, even after they have been put in the ground. There are I know not how many maladies in which the patient remains for a long time speechless, motionless, and without sensible respiration. Some drowned persons who have been thought dead, have been revived by care and attention.

All this is well known and may serve to explain how some vampires have been taken out of their graves, and have spoken, cried, howled, vomited blood, and all that because they were not yet dead. They have been killed by beheading them, piercing their heart, and burning them; in all which people were very wrong, for the pretext on which they acted, of their pretended reappearance to disturb the living, causing their death, and maltreating them, is not a sufficient reason for treating them thus. Besides, their pretended return has never been proved or attested in such a way as to authorize any one to show such inhumanity, nor to dishonor and put rigorously to death on vague, frivolous, unproved accusations, persons who were certainly innocent of the thing laid to their charge.

For nothing is more ill-founded than what is said of the apparitions, vexations, and confusion caused by the pretended vampires and the vroucolacas. I am not surprised that the Sorbonne should have condemned the b.l.o.o.d.y and violent executions which are exercised on these kinds of dead bodies. But it is astonis.h.i.+ng that the secular powers and the magistrates do not employ their authority and the severity of the laws to repress them.

The magic devotions, the fascinations, the evocations of which we have spoken, are works of darkness, operations of Satan, if they have any reality, which I can with difficulty believe, especially in regard to magical devotions, and the evocations of the manes or souls of dead persons; for, as to fascinations of the sight, or illusions of the senses, it is foolish not to admit some of these, as when we think we see what is not, or do not behold what is present before our eyes; or when we think we hear a sound which in reality does not strike our ears, or the contrary. But to say that the demon can cause a person's death, because they have made a wax image of him, or given his name with some superst.i.tious ceremonies, and have devoted him or her, so that the persons feel themselves dying as their image melts away, is ascribing to the demon too much power, and to magic too much might.

G.o.d can, when he wills it, loosen the reign of the enemy of mankind, and permit him to do us the harm which he and his agents may seek to do us; but it would be ridiculous to believe that the Sovereign Master of nature can be determined by magical incantations to allow the demon to hurt us; or to imagine that the magician has the power to excite the demon against us, independently of G.o.d.

The instance of that peasant who gave his child to the devil, and whose life the devil first took away and then restored, is one of those extraordinary and almost incredible circ.u.mstances which are sometimes to be met with in history, and which neither theology nor philosophy knows how to explain. Was it a demon who animated the body of the boy, or did his soul re-enter his body by the permission of G.o.d? By what authority did the demon take away this boy's life, and then restore it to him? G.o.d may have permitted it to punish the impiety of the wretched father, who had given himself to the devil to satisfy a shameful and criminal pa.s.sion. And again, how could he satisfy it with a demon, who appeared to him in the form of a girl he loved? In all that I see only darkness and difficulties, which I leave to be resolved by those who are more learned or bolder than myself.

CHAPTER LXII.

REMARKS ON THE DISSERTATION CONCERNING THE SPIRIT WHICH REAPPEARED AT ST. MAUR DES FOSSES.

The following Dissertation on the apparition which happened at St.

Maur, near Paris, in 1706, was entirely unknown to me. A friend who took some part in my work on apparitions, had asked me by letter if I should have any objection to its being printed at the end of my work.

I readily consented, on his testifying that it was from a worthy hand, and deserved to be saved from the oblivion into which it was fallen. I have since found that it was printed in the fourth volume of the Treatise on Superst.i.tions, by the Reverend Father le Brun, of the Oratoire.

After the impression, a learned monk[645] wrote to me from Amiens, in Picardy, that he had remarked in this dissertation five or six propositions which appeared to him to be false.

1st. That the author says, all the holy doctors agree that no means of deceiving us is left to the demons except suggestion, which has been left them by G.o.d to try our virtue.

2d. In respect to all those prodigies and spells which the common people attribute to sorcery and intercourse with the demon, it is proved that they can only be done by means of natural magic; this is the opinion of the greater number of the fathers of the church.

3d. All that demons have to do with the criminal practices of those who are commonly called sorcerers is suggestion, by which he invites them to the abominable research of all those natural causes which can hurt our neighbor.

4th. Although those who have desired to maintain the popular error of the return to earth of souls from purgatory, may have endeavored to support their opinion by different pa.s.sages, taken from St. Augustine, St. Jerome, St. Thomas, &c., it is attested that all these fathers speak only of the return of the blessed to manifest the glory of G.o.d.

5th. Of what may we not believe the imagination capable after so strong a proof of its power? Can it be doubted that among all the pretended apparitions of which stories are related, the fancy alone works for all those which do not proceed from angels and the spirits of the blessed, and that the rest are the invention of men?

6th. After having sufficiently established the fact, that all apparitions which cannot be attributed to angels, or the spirits of the blessed, are produced only by one of these causes: the writer names them--first, the power of imagination; secondly, the extreme subtility of the senses; and thirdly, the derangement of the organs, as in madness and high fevers.

The monk who writes to me maintains that the first proposition is false; that the ancient fathers of the church ascribe to the demon the greater number of those extraordinary effects produced by certain sounds of the voice, by figures, and by phantoms; that the exorcists in the primitive church expelled devils, even by the avowal of the heathen; that angels and demons have often appeared to men; that no one has spoken more strongly of apparitions, of hauntings, and the power of the demon, than the ancient fathers; that the church has always employed exorcism on children presented for baptism, and against those who were haunted and possessed by the demon. Add to which, the author of the dissertation cites not one of the fathers to support his general proposition.[646]

The second proposition, again, is false; for if we must attribute to natural magic all that is ascribed to sorcerers, there are then no sorcerers, properly so called, and the church is mistaken in offering up prayers against their power.

The third proposition is false for the same reason.

The fourth is falser still, and absolutely contrary to St. Thomas, who, speaking of the dead in general who appear, says that this occurs either by a miracle, or by the particular permission of G.o.d, or by the operation of good or evil angels.[647]

The fifth proposition, again, is false, and contrary to the fathers, to the opinion commonly received among the faithful, and to the customs of the church. If all the apparitions which do not proceed from the angels or the blessed, or the inventive malice of mankind, proceed only from fancy, what becomes of all the apparitions of demons related by the saints, and which occurred to the saints? What becomes, in particular, of all the stories of the holy solitaries, of St.

Anthony, St. Hilarion, &c.?[648] What becomes of the prayers and ceremonies of the church against demons, who infest, possess, and haunt, and appear often in these disturbances, possessions, and hauntings?

The sixth proposition is false for the same reasons, and many others which might be added.

"These," adds the reverend father who writes to me, "are the causes of my doubting if the third dissertation was added to the two others with your knowledge. I suspected that the printer, of his own accord, or persuaded by evil intentioned persons, might have added it himself, and without your partic.i.p.ation, although under your name. For I said to myself, either the reverend father approves this dissertation, or he does not approve of it. It appears that he approves of it, since he says that it is from a clever writer, and he would wish to preserve it from oblivion.

"Now, how can he approve a dissertation false in itself and contrary to himself? If he approves it not, is it not too much to unite to his work a foolish composition full of falsehoods, disguises, false and weak arguments, opposed to the common belief, the customs, and prayers of the church; consequently dangerous, and quite favorable to the free and incredulous thinkers which this age is so full of? Ought he not rather to combat this writing, and show its weakness, falsehood, and dangerous tendency? There, my reverend father, lies all my difficulty."

Others have sent me word that they could have wished that I had treated the subject of apparitions in the same way as the author of this dissertation, that is to say, simply as a philosopher, with the aim of destroying the credence and reality, rather than with any design of supporting the belief in apparitions which is so observable in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament, in the fathers, and in the customs and prayers of the church. The author of whom we speak has cited the fathers, but in a general manner, and without marking the testimonies, and the express and formal pa.s.sages. I do not know if he thinks much of them, and if he is well versed in them, but it would hardly appear so from his work.

The grand principle on which this third dissertation turns is, that since the advent and the death of Jesus Christ, all the power of the devil is limited to enticing, inspiring, and persuading to evil; but for the rest, he is tied up like a lion or a dog in his prison. He may bark, he may menace, but he cannot bite unless he is too nearly approached and yielded to, as St. Augustine truly says:[649] "Mordere omnino non potest nisi volentem."

But to pretend that Satan can do no harm, either to the health of mankind, or to the fruits of the earth; can neither attack us by his stratagems, his malice, and his fury against us, nor torment those whom he pursues or possesses; that magicians and wizards can make use of no spells and charms to cause both men and animals dreadful maladies, and even death, is a direct attack on the faith of the church, the Holy Scriptures, the most sacred practices, and the opinions of not only the holy fathers and the best theologians, but also on the laws and ordinances of princes, and the decrees of the most respectable parliaments.

I will not here cite the instances taken from the Old Testament, the author having limited himself to what has pa.s.sed since the death and resurrection of our Saviour; because, he says, Jesus Christ has destroyed the kingdom of Satan, and the prince of this world is already judged.[650]

St. Peter, St. Paul, St. John, and the Evangelists, who were well informed of the words of the Son of G.o.d, and the sense given to them, teach us that Satan asked to have power over the apostles of Jesus Christ, to sift them like wheat;[651] that is to say, to try them by persecutions and make them renounce the faith. Does not St. Paul complain of the _angel of Satan_ who buffeted him?[652] Did those whom he gave up to Satan for their crimes,[653] suffer nothing bodily?

Those who took the communion unworthily, and were struck with sickness, or even with death, did they not undergo these chastis.e.m.e.nts by the operation of the demon?[654] The apostle warns the Corinthians not to suffer themselves to be surprised by Satan, who sometimes transforms himself into an angel of light.[655] The same apostle, speaking to the Thessalonians, says to them, that before the last day antichrist will appear,[656] according to the working of Satan, with extraordinary power, with wonders and deceitful signs. In the Apocalypse the demon is the instrument made use of by G.o.d, to punish mortals and make them drink of the cup of his wrath. Does not St.

Peter[657] tell us that "the devil prowls about us like a roaring lion, always ready to devour us?" And St. Paul to the Ephesians,[658]

"that we have to fight not against men of flesh and blood, but against princ.i.p.alities and powers, against the princes of this world," that is to say, of this age of darkness, "against the spirits of malice spread about in the air?"